Climate governance in federal Belgium: modest subnational policies in a complex multi-level setting

Abstract

In research on climate governance, increasing attention is given to the potential role of subnational governments as loci of bottom-up policy innovation. This article looks at the role that the Belgian subnational governments can play, from the perspective of the Belgian federal architecture. The findings point out that the Belgian subnational governments do not act as laboratories of experimentation. On the one hand, climate change touches upon political sensitivities that hijack the intergovernmental cooperative mechanisms. On the other hand, the policy-making opportunities of federalism are constrained by the low ambitions on climate change of political actors at all levels, and the system at the same time allows them to maintain those low ambitions. It is argued that the complexities of the Belgian system favour status quo policies for climate change, which makes this analysis a crucial case in the multi-level governance of climate change.